


Juno Steel and the Oath of Six

by kit_kaboodle



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Demons, F/F, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, canon-typical juno being a simp, canon-typical nureyev being a simp, the works you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 18:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kit_kaboodle/pseuds/kit_kaboodle
Summary: "Hyperion City. A shining haven for all things rich and powerful, and a dingy cesspool for the rest of us. This city ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, under the glittering glamors littering the streets. But somewhere, somehow, this city is hiding someone who really does feel like he’s magic. And I’m gonna find him."Juno Steel can't let a mystery go, and Peter Nureyev is the greatest mystery of them all. To find him, Juno's going to have to use every spell he knows, work with some particularly unsavory people, and, most of all, will go through some of the biggest challenges of his life. And even once he finds Nureyev, who knows what could happen?Tonight's tale is...Juno Steel and the Oath of Six
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Juno Steel and the Oath of Six

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [means and devices](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17648399) by [howlikeagod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod). 



> This is only kind of inspired by means and devices. I basically just took the fantasy premise and ran with it.
> 
> This is my first fic in a really long time, so I hope y'all enjoy it! This has been encouraged by a large number of friends via TikTok and Discord, so thank you all for hyping me up, especially Talfryn, Chentelle, Moth, and Ripley. Y'all have been really excited for this, so I hope this satisfies! This is gonna be a long one, folks, so strap in.
> 
> Chapter TW:  
> Very brief references to Sarah Steel  
> Very brief references to Diamond and domestic violence

Hyperion City. A shining haven for all things rich and powerful, and a dingy cesspool for the rest of us. This city ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, under the glittering glamors littering the streets. But somewhere, somehow, this city is hiding someone who really does feel like he’s magic. And I’m gonna find him.

  
My name is Juno Steel. I’m a private eye, and have been for too many years to count. This isn’t my first missing persons case, and it probably won’t be my last, but this one’s different. This time it’s someone I...well, let’s just say I wanna solve this one sooner rather than later.

  
I’m sitting at my desk, middle of the night, holding a wrinkled and worn piece of paper carefully between my callused fingers. I’m surprised it’s still readable, given how many times I’ve taken it out, unfolded it, run my fingers over it, and shoved it back in my pocket to pretend it doesn’t exist. But somehow I can still read the words as clearly as the day they’d been written. _Signed, your better half..._

  
Peter Nureyev. I haven’t been able to get that name out of my head, same as I haven’t been able to get that damn scent out of my nose. That guy was like a radioactive sandstorm, turning my entire world upside down without giving me time to run for cover and leaving a trace behind that I could feel seeping into my bones.

  
The last time I saw Nureyev he was making an incredible escape from police custody using, from my best guess, a great amount of skill and a high end glamor spell. I knew the police would never be able to keep him down. What I didn’t know, however, was where Nureyev had gotten the spell in the first place. From what I could tell, Nureyev was human, despite his best efforts to allude to the contrary. After all, Rex Glass was a demon, and his glamor was good enough to trick me into believing it. For a while, anyway. The second I had him in my magic cancelling handcuffs, the glamor had dropped, and a perfectly human man was standing in front of me. The one thing that didn’t really change about him was that goddamn smile. And those teeth.

  
I try not to think too hard about that particular detail.

  
I’m startled out of my reverie by a cold tingle behind me.

  
“Whatcha lookin at, Super Steel?”

  
The ghost of my brother Benzaiten leans over my shoulder to read the note. I move quickly, slamming my hands over it on the desk like he’s trying to cheat off my test. “None of your damn business,” I say hotly, feeling a slight blush creep slowly up my neck. I will it to go away as Benten laughs at me.

  
“Not that note again,” he says. “How many times have you looked at that thing?” Suddenly his eyes light up, a hazy grin forming on his translucent face. “Oh! Did you finally get a lead on him or something?”

  
I sigh, slumping down in my uncomfortable chair. “No, nothing. It’s been two goddamn months, and I haven’t heard anything about shapeshifters or thieves who use glamors.” I wipe a hand down my face, then grimace at the smudged eyeliner on my palm. “I’m starting to think this one’s a dead end.”

  
Benten floats around and sits on the desk next to the note. “Come on, Lady Rain Cloud, there’s at least one avenue you haven’t considered.”

  
I give him a withering look. “Oh? And what might that be?”

  
He gives me a pointed look, then looks down at the note, then back at me, cocking an eyebrow. Sometimes I forget he’s dead when he does stuff like that. It’s just so like he was, like he hasn’t lost any of that vibrancy from life. I remember when I first felt his presence. It was a few years after he died, and I was sitting alone in the apartment I shared with Diamond. We’d just had another fight, and she’d left in a huff. “Taking a walk,” she’d said, slamming the door behind her so hard she knocked the coat rack off the wall. I then proceeded to curl up on the floor next to the couch and cry my eyes out, shivering. I was so upset it took me a few minutes to realize the shivering was because I was cold, and the cold was because there was a ghostly arm wrapped around my shoulders holding me tight and rocking me back and forth.

  
“You’re kind of a wreck without me, huh, Super Steel?”

  
And he’s been around ever since. Gotten me through more than one tough spot, that’s for sure. And he’s been a huge pain in the ass on top of it all, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from him.

  
“Earth to Juno,” Benten says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

  
I shake my head and look fully at my twin. “Nowhere, I’m right here. Haven’t moved from this chair.”

  
“Uh-huh.” He swings his feet back and forth, the heels of his sneakers occasionally passing through the desk drawer. “So? What’s the solution, huh? Brilliant detective can’t figure it out?” He grins. Grumbling, I look down at the note, then back at him. He’s still grinning, but I can see him glancing down at my arm every few seconds.  
It doesn’t take long for me to figure out what he means after that.

  
“Absolutely not.” I push back and roll away from my desk, standing up forcefully and walking to grab my coat.

  
“Come on,” Benten whines, “why not? You haven’t done any magic in a really long time, Juno, and you know that -”

  
“If I don’t use it I’ll lose it, I get it.” I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose just above the long, thin scar from the number of times I’ve broken it. “I just…”

“I know,” Benten floats over to me and leans on the wall by my coat. “But it couldn’t hurt to try, right? I mean,” he says, grin starting to peak back through - can’t keep the guy down, I swear - as he waggles his eyebrows at me. “You’re so hung up on the guy, it’s starting to make me sick. Just track him down and ask him out already, will ya?”

  
Despite myself I let out a harsh laugh, reaching through him to grab my coat. “Hey!” he protests, “you know I hate when you do that!”

  
I just grin as I shrug on the old duster, then, before I can talk myself out of it, I grab the note still sitting on my desk and tuck it into the inside pocket. “Come on, let’s go home. I have some stuff to look up.”

Back at my apartment, I dig up the small number of spellbooks Benten insists I keep around. They’re old and worn, probably not worth the paper they’re printed on, but they work for my purposes and the few spells I actually tend to cast. It’s not something I enjoy doing, I can tell you that.

  
The spells in each book are in no good order that I can discern, so I spend the next couple of hours scanning through each one, a cup of coffee and the sounds of the sleeping city keeping me company.

  
And Benten.

  
“Come on, Juno, you can work on this in the morning,” he says, the neon lights outside making his form even hazier.

  
“Nope, if I’m gonna find this goddamn spell I’m gonna do it right now,” I say, flipping the pages with a little more force than necessary. He’s right, though. I can already feel sleep starting to take me as I stare down at yet another kitchen-based spell. It made me want to laugh with the irony of it all. Ma sure had a lot of cooking sigils for someone who never went into the kitchen for anything but her next drink. “Besides, this was your idea.”

  
“Guess I am the smarter twin after all, huh?”

  
I grumble at his smug tone and flip to the next page. I sit up a little straighter when I see a compass in the upper corner of the page. Finally, something useful.

  
“I think I found it,” I say, running my finger down the instructions. Looks simple enough, needing just something belonging to the person I’m trying to find and a sigil. It bears a resemblance to the compass above it, but without the full compass rose. “All I have to do is focus real hard on his note and draw this sigil in my tattoo.” I pull up my sleeve and reveal the magic circle I had cast into my skin as a tattoo. It’s faded a little over the years, but as I run my finger over the ink I can feel the magic come back to the surface, glowing a faint blue that only I can see. My heart stutters in my chest. A lead. “Right,” I say, leaning forward to grab a pen from the coffee table. “Time to see if mom’s spells are full of shit.”

  
Before I can react, Benten is in front of me, holding the pen close to his chest. “Nope, not tonight, Super Steel.” I make a grab for the pen and he floats up towards the ceiling, which is a little too high for me to reach. Damn short legs. “You haven’t slept in what, 24 hours? Go to bed and you can cast the spell in the morning.”

  
I give him a look and cross my arms. “Benzaiten-”

  
“Oooh, we’re doing full names, are we?” he says, that shit-eating grin back on his face. “You really that serious about this guy?”

  
I don’t say anything, still glaring at him. We stay like that for a minute before Benten sighs and comes back down to eye level. He holds out the pen and I take it, clutching it tightly so he doesn’t try to take it back. “No, I’m not! It’s just...he’s just so...augh!” I turn away. I don’t have time to try to explain whatever is going on with me. I don’t even have the words to explain it. I hate saying it, but I don’t know why I’m so hung up on Nureyev.

  
_It took one day for him to trust you with his biggest secret,_ a small voice in the back of my head says. _He gave you his name, you might as well use it._

  
“Hey,” Benten says, gentler this time, following me as I go back to the couch. “I didn’t mean that, you know? I’m just -”

  
“Worried about me, yeah, I get it.” I sit down hard and put my head in my hands. “I just need to find him, alright?”

  
“Alright,” Benten says, giving me space to breathe. “I get it. He’s a mystery, and you can’t let those go unsolved, right? What kinda private dick would you be then?”

  
Despite myself, I laugh a little. Benten could always do that, make my laugh when I felt like crying. “Yeah, exactly.”

  
“So what are you waiting for, detective? Go get your man.”

The sigil on my arm aches by the time I slam open the door to my office the next morning, exhausted and burnt out. I’d spent all night walking to different parts of the city, feeling the sigil pull me this way and that. As I hang up my coat, I try to think about what I did wrong. Was my tattoo in need of a tune-up? Was the sigil really just busted?

  
No, I think, it can’t be that. It was definitely leading me somewhere, I could feel it. It wasn’t like I was going around and around in circles, it was like Nureyev had been walking everywhere around the city, and the sigil was simply taking me on the exact route he’d taken. But I still came up with nothing. I finally gave up when I found myself outside a junkyard on the opposite end of the city from where I started. No way was I traipsing through trash when there was no solid evidence Nureyev was anywhere near it.

  
Besides, I think bitterly, there’s no reason to suspect Nureyev was still on Mars, let alone still in Hyperion. What kind of thief sticks around after getting the goods?

  
_The kind you thought you had a connection with_ , that traitorous part of my mind supplies. I tell it to shut up as I pass by Rita’s desk and go into my main office, making a beeline for the coffee maker. I think back to last night and Benten saying I should probably get some sleep before running around on my wild goose chase. Why is he always right?

  
“MORNIN BOSS!” I hear the front door of the office slam. I wince a little, headache starting to form, and down about half the coffee, not bothering to respond. She’s still talking, something about a stream she saw last night about space pirates and Jupiter’s moons.

  
I sit down at my desk and start sorting through the files I was organizing yesterday. Rita comes in, still chattering away - “...and there was this real pretty girl, boss, with big poofy fur like mine, but believe you me, she did not keep hers as well groomed, especially in the scene when she had to become a wolf permanently so she could stay free from the rival pirates and…” - so I start to tune her out, until I hear her stop mid-sentence and take a big long sniff. “Mistah Steel?”

  
“Yeah, Rita?”

  
“Why do you smell like garbage?”

  
I snort. “Gee, thanks Rita, really needed the reminder that I forgot to shower this morning.”

  
“No, really, boss,” she says, coming closer to lean on my desk. “You smell like a dump. And…” she sniffs again, “and nighttime? And there’s somethin’ else there, it’s almost like…” She gasps. “MAGIC? What’ve you been up to?”

  
“Nothing,” I say, refusing to look at her as I stack some files next to me. “Just, you know, doing some detective work.”

  
“You’re bein’ awfully cagey about this, Mistah Steel,” she says, squinting through her cat eye glasses at me. “Come to think of it, you’ve been awfully cagey about a lotta stuff lately. Comin’ and goin’ at all hours. Are you workin’ a case I don’t know about?”

  
“No, Rita, it’s not like that, it’s-” I stop short at the look in her eyes and sigh. Rita is way smarter than she looks, and I can tell I’m not gonna get anything past her. “Fine. So, you remember Agent Glass, right?” Rita giggles a little and I roll my eyes. “Yeah, him. Well, he left me this note, and I’m trying to find him again-”

  
“BOSS!” Rita shrieks. “Are you tellin’ me you and not-Agent Glass got all romance-y with each other and now you’re trying to find him again to confess your feelings?”

  
“Something like that, I guess,” I mumble, running my hand through my hair self-consciously. “I mean, it’s not quite like that, but-”

  
“Say no more, Mistah Steel, detective _RITA’S_ on the case!” She comes around and pulls me up from my desk, her werewolf strength making it impossible to stop her. “Now, you go get some rest and let Rita take care of everything, don’t you worry.” She starts pulling me to the door.

  
“Rita, no, stop, it’s fine, I’m fine-”

  
“You haven’t slept in over a day, boss, there’s no way I’m lettin’ you go gallivantin’ around the city until you’ve gotten at least four hours, alright? Now go home, Mr. Benzaiten is probably worried sick about ya by now, I can tell you haven’t gone home since yesterday, you don’t smell like any of those fancy herbs you use whenever you do one-a your spells. I’ll call you when I find somethin’, I promise.” She’s talking so fast it’s hard to get a word in edgewise, and before I know it she’s got my coat around my shoulders and is pushing me out the front door. “Sleep well, Mistah Steel!” she calls as she slams the door shut behind me.

  
I stand there for a second, blinking hard, and decide it’s not worth arguing with her. I take a taxi home and, without doing anything but grunting a hello to Benten, pass out in my clothes.

It feels like I’d just closed my eyes when I get a buzz on my comms. I throw a hand out to silence it before realizing it’s not an alarm. I sit up, grab the damn thing, and hit the answer button. “Detective Steel.”

  
“Hi there, Steel,” a familiar, gruff voice says on the other line. “Just got a call from your secretary. Got a case you need some help on or somethin’.”

  
Valles Vicky, of Valles Vicky’s Vixen Valley. Of all the people I had expected Rita to go to for help, she was not one of them.

  
“Hey, Vick,” I say roughly, sitting up and yawning. Why the hell not, right? “Yeah, I got somethin’ you can help me with.”


End file.
